


you are my shallow grave

by the_ocean_weekender



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1974), The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: 1920s, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst and Romance, Dysfunctional Relationships, Gen or Pre-Slash, Ghosts, Haunting, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Not Really Character Death, Period Typical Bigotry, Post-Canon Fix-It, if you can call this a fix it, read it how you like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:35:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21808297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ocean_weekender/pseuds/the_ocean_weekender
Summary: After Jay’s death, Nick takes something from his mansion before the curtain draws over the elaborate stage forever and Jay’s ghost starts to haunt him.Spoiler: Jay Gatsby isn’t really dead.“Don’t you ‘old sport’ me, you’re dead!”“You just can’t let that go, can you?”
Relationships: Nick Carraway/Jay Gatsby
Comments: 19
Kudos: 164





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hoo boy this was written over the court of 3 days off from work and it was a wild ride from start to finish- I was going to write the sequel to flowers blooming from your hope but I have no motivation :) I was going to upload this as one long fic but I've typed up this part today and thought it might be better as a chapter story? the rest IS finished, just needs typing
> 
> content warnings for period typical attitudes towards mental health issues, alcohol abuse/ism, swearing, suicidal thoughts/ideation, mental breakdowns of a sort .... basically every head canon I ever had about nick post novel is in here

Three weeks after the half-hearted, horrendous day that was Gatsby’s funeral, Nick Carraway spent what he thought would be his last night in New York by trespassing on the man’s property. The grass on the blue lawn had grown as long as his own and he waited with baited breath and righteous fury for one of the taxi drivers from the village to peel away back down the sweeping drive- that particular man with his particular cab never took a fare past the place without stopping for a minute and pointing inside for the benefit of his passengers.

When the headlights slid away and joined the lights of the city did Nick step away from the wall and start up the white marble steps to the huge, incoherent failure of a house once more. It was so huge, even the Sound couldn’t be heard behind it, a fact he was only realising now as he stared up at the tall gables. Impossibly, it seemed even larger without anyone else- just him, peering up and even the door handles were almost as big as his face. _What a White House_. _And this is what it’s become_. He blinked and it was just a mansion- _just_ , how incomprehensible that anything related to Gatsby could be just anything- no gold, no glitter, an expanded version of his own roof and just a house with no occupants.

Sighing more to remind himself he still existed than to express ant sort of emotion, Nick began the trek through the weeds to the beach. It had been a long three weeks since- well, it had been a long three weeks. Policeman came, then reporters and flashing camera, then more policemen and then no one, no one except a doddering old man from one of the Dakotas mourning a son he had loved for his money and old Owl Eyes, uncouth for mourning something symbolic and greater than the man himself. All the reasons and people that Gatsby had soared to such heights to impress, shooting out of the grounds to erupt like flowers blooming in fast movies, they had all vanished like ghosts and now the remains of his dreams lay here withering, buffeted by the currents as they too waited to dissolve completely.

And Nick?

Already his thirties had exhausted him, a long decade extending in front of him so far it left the air too thin for him to breathe, disaffected with everyone; he had vowed he’d make tonight his last and would catch a train tomorrow somewhere- somewhere- somewhere. East. Anywhere but West, though with no disillusions he could end up anywhere but home, Chicago again. _It’s not so bad_ he tried to console himself, _I at least lasted longer than three sets of Gatsby’s servants_. Yet as when one president shook the hands of another and stepped off the stage there was no victory singing in his blood, only the next act beginning on the stage under the stars as they winked in and out, indifferent. The black-coated backs of the hired help he had watched single-file their way down the drive to Meyer Wolfsheim’s cars were not his enemy, nor was his cousin. His enemy was time itself- time, and whatever force had taken such a gorgeous personality from the world and left it poorer.

Without thinking, he had been trailing his hand over the smooth brickwork as his made his way around the mansion to the beach, as every child had once done on iron railings, listening to the sounds. And by complete and utter subconscious accident he had discovered a side door was unlocked and by no conscious thought on his own part did Nick decide to enter. When he finally reconciled his thoughts and mind together, he was halfway across the servants’ hall and decided, in that base practicality possessed by all common men, that he may was well continue now he was here and crept, lightly, like a spider round the darkened rooms. What had been gorgeous lit up was horrific in the dark- entire walls became abysses, their deep oak panelling soaking up the light and even blacker than the spaces between stars; silence hung low despite the high ceilings until Nick thought he would suffocate. Another door clicked open under his touch as if by magic, but it only made him think of a phone line clicking as the gentleman on the other end hung up and the smooth surface of James Gatz’ coffin. Even when his father- in an unprecedented fit of sentimentality- asked to see the body the nails remained hammered down. It remained a closed-casket surface for an audience who wasn’t there. Who had already moved on to the next exploding star in New York, like moths to the next thing.

Nick, to his embarrassment, got lost rather quickly, chasing after an exit because although no one would be around to see if he scaled down from a balcony, it might ruin his trousers.

Stubbing his toe on some ebony case from China, he contemplated how much of Gatsby’s possessions still remained- of course, Mr Gatz wouldn’t have had any room nor use for any of it at all back in North Dakota, and logic he supposed dictated that the police need take as evidence only two bodies and a pistol, but… Nick didn’t put it past Wolfsheim to sell the expensive goods for little-needed funds. Or even for the old servants to help themselves, given their lack of job security, or even for Jay to have had made a will to say who got what and when and what for or for the criminals of cities far and wide to plunder what they could from Tutankhamun’s tomb or for some heartfelt politician to make the case to donate the lot to charity or some deserving orphanage. Surely _something_ had to happen?

“Now, now, Nick,” he spoke aloud the first words he had said in four days. “You’re too old to lie to yourself and call it an honour.”

 _Nick_ had expected something to happen; if not because this was New York then because it was Gatsby, but life out West had no time to pause and hang its head over the puddle of a man’s life and it all carried on, the past forgotten and the people careless. And without meaning to again- _my problem_ he thought _is things keep happening to me without me getting a say_ \- he went into the very centre of the altar. Even the bed was still made. It occurred to Nick he was the only person in the entire house. The curtains had been taken down though the bed was still made and the green light was visible through the window. It was all immensely hilarious to Nick and he laughed and fell to his knees sobbing. Through the bay doors, the green light burned at the end of a stranger’s dock and barely distinguished itself from any of the other houses or pleasure boats tugging along the water. It was simply part of New York, no enchanted object to be found.

How long he sat there sobbing he didn’t know but when it was over his knees hurt and his face was dry. Looking up, he could hardly see the expensive marble that stretched all the way to the ceiling trims, glancing side to side could not pick out the lush silk shirts from the shadows, could not see that the gloomy angular bed and mattress was any different from his own, only bigger. His own green light was gone and Nick thought his heart might give out with the pain of it. “It hurts,” only the words did not sound like words to his ears- garbled through tears and snot and the wet, damp feeling sadness puts in a man’s mouth they became incomprehensible and rather than repeating himself he stopped speaking altogether and put his head in his hands and sobbed a bit more until he was completely, utterly wrung out like a tea towel. Everything hurt and he was sure he was broken and, like all the other times he had been hurt and broken, he soon enough stopped crying and got to his feet, pulling himself back together because there was nothing else to be done.

 _I’m sorry Jay_. Burning in his pocket was a messy, crossed out fifth draft of an eulogy that he had tried to write for the fallen god; intended to be read aloud to the green light in a memorial service. But Nick Carraway hadn't read it aloud at the funeral itself and reading it would not ring any lone traveller or socialite through to door to mourn alongside him through tonight in a silent vigil. He was bullshitting himself. It would be two-faced and cowardly to read it now when he hadn't at the funeral and with disgust he turned away from his reflection in the glass. Eyes falling upon the stout, silent dresser alongside the wall like a soldier or stature at permanent parade rest, the toilette set of solid dull golf looked no different from the rest of the house. Yet Nick brought the hairbrush up close to his face, caught just a glimpse of fine strands of hair in the bristles and could think only of Jay, and if his flaxen hair had floated in the pool water as he died. If, despite the atrocity of it all, any butler or policeman had mistaken it for a halo.

More likely as not they hadn't, no.

Wretched and adrift, he shoved the hair brush into his pocket and then in one fell swoop sent every item on the dresser crashing to the floor where the thick carpet muffled the noise. Nick made to move the dresser as well- kick it, throw it, break it- only it was solid and stout and impassable so he threw one bottle of whiskey against the wall and un-stoppered the other and wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand. To hell with his trousers.

***

All the stars, it seemed, had fled from the sky above him to that behind the buildings across the Sound and winked at him through their windows. With a curse Nick spilt a generous amount of alcohol on his shirt and with another bemoaned throwing away the stopper, though didn’t think to go back inside and find a replacement. Gatsby’s house was so bug that he could see the eaves of the roof at the very top of his vision and he pushed the grief that came up with the tide back down with a slug of whiskey. Nick had no need for the bothersome things in life. The plan was this: he was going to leave town tomorrow, like they did in the movies, with no preparation or explanation. Go anywhere and leave everything and just _go_. Become the same careless men he loathed and loved and try to forget all about Jay Gatsby, James Gatz, his cousin, Jordan Baker and New York. Nick Carraway was taking charge of his own life at last, background character no longer, leaving all his worldly possessions behind except his hat and just… he was just going to _go_.

It was that or work day in day out until the weather got so cold and the train platform so icy he could slip and fall under the wheels of the 9:32 to Bronx.

Soft tutting echoed round his head. _Now, now, old sport, we want none of that!_

Nick smiled thinly. The only person in the world who was giving a damn about him and it was the romanticised bootlegger inside his own head.

Maybe they’d tell his family he got mixed up in a nasty business with bootleggers… He snorted. Who was around to tell his family anything?

Daisy was family.

He scoffed. Daisy was so rich they may as well not have been related at all. _Who’s keeping me here_? _Or what?_ Nothing. No one at all. He just had to go.

***

Despite it all or perhaps because of the whiskey he had consumed, he didn’t feel half so bad as the night grew old. Draining the last of the liquid gold from the bottle and wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, he looked up again as the clouds pulsed over the night faster. The glass was cool under his palms, _that’s probably a month’s wages I’ve just drank_ he marvelled, still, at the opulence of Gatsby. The totality of him. How empty the world felt now the Great Gatsby was gone. Normally such thoughts would have send him spiralling into tears or purple rage or- rarer, furious novels falling under his hands- but he was buoyed by the alcohol keeping his heart afloat and merely decided it was time for bed. The world spun as he stood, as it did when disembarking a rollercoaster at Coney Island and he blinked the sea back into place, shut any thoughts of never taking Gatsby up on his offer to visit the place into a box. _That’s all behind me now_ Nick vowed, leaving the bottle in the sand and clutching the hairbrush’s handle in his pocket as he turned his back on the place that was now just a house.

Walking home, he did not feel quite as lonely as he had since the gunshot ripped apart the air- almost as if the house itself had a consoling hand on his shoulder. The pressure was so realistic that Nick stopped in the middle of the overgrown lawn and put his free hand up to his shoulder. He touched only air yet still did not feel half so bad as he had grown used to.

With a smile, he unlocked his front door. _Perhaps I really am getting better._

Clothes fell by the wayside as he staggered upstairs; he told himself it was the abandoned garments casting the flickers the corners of his eyes as they fell to the floor, nothing else. He slept soundly.

***

The first thing to alert Nick that something was wrong was that, though he could see Jay sitting at the end of the bed, he couldn’t feel him sitting on top of his legs. Even in the grey light before dawn the man was the perfection of all the food in the world, and as Nick rubbed the sleep away from his eyes and he noticed he was awake he began to smile, one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that faced the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on a man with an irresistible prejudice in his favor, as if the sun had come out.

Nick sat up in bed. The air was cold on his bare shoulders and his head was heavy with last night’s whiskey; under the covers, he moved his legs back and forth without restriction and on top of the covers he could see nothing but an errant sock in dire need of darning. “Jay,” he croaked out reverently, unnecessarily. Nothing stirred at the sound of his voice. Nick closed his eyes and opened them again, then closed them again and let his entire body feels the effects of a dead man’s whiskey, wondering if he was in any state to work.

He remembered.

The curtains fluttered with each breathe he drew and the pale blue breeze settled over his skin and smelt of liquor and sea salt, his body cried aloud with its need to visit the water-closet and rid itself of a drink worth more than a month’s wages. No sound reached his ears over the kaleidoscopes of colour that danced behind his eyelids as he dug his palms into the eye sockets. More than once his hands came into contact with the stubble covering the lower half of his face and his mouth twisted down. He hated having a beard- his father was of a sensitive disposition as he grew later in years and if he knew he was forgoing all sense of hygiene he’d go into conniptions.

Shaving, shaving was within his capabilities, so shaving he did. After, looking at a face in the bathroom mirror that was his but didn’t feel like it, with no other idea of how to proceed when life was unravelling around oneself, he got dressed for work and had nothing for breakfast but coffee and aspirin.

For all the dread and disgust the commute brought, bustling with passengers and breathing in more dust than air, as the carriage rocked down the tracks it allowed Nick to slide everything neatly into place within his own head. By the time he walked through the door his mind’s eye was firmly fixed on lunch and any silly apparition was blamed on alcohol or tiredness- both of which he had had a lot of lately.

“Absolutely nothing,” he promised a girl in typing when she asked if anything was wrong. “Not a thing.” Pride surged through his veins when she believed him- pride at being such a good liar, such a well-rounded and capable man, a grown man who could leave his problems at the door. he was thirty and sometimes if a man told the same lie until everyone believed it, he stopped being a liar.

***

“No, I’m sorry old sport, but that wouldn’t be such a good idea at all. Farming’s a risky business these days.”

Nick frowned down at the sheath of documents his boss had asked him to review, “Then how do you explain- w- w- wait, I- Jay?” His head snapped up and he saw the dead man himself- and through him as well, for clad in his pink suit, though dapper as ever, he was slightly translucent. Behind Jay was the door to Nick’s office and people came and went through the frosted glass partition. Gulping against the dry, chalky taste in his mouth, he first looked at his door, then moved right to the right and looked at the people moving through Jay’s torso, then moved his head again and looked up at his face- though diaphanous his fine features were the same as they had been the last time Nick saw him, probably even more beautiful than the last time. It was like looking at a photographic negative of a Michelangelo.

He could think of nothing to say but the dead obvious, papers sweaty in his hands. “You’re dead!”

The ghost frowned, “Now listen here, old sport, that isn’t something to accuse a friend of lightly.”

“You’re dead!” Nick insisted hotly, breath coming in fast little wheezes whistling through his teeth. “You rook the fall for Daisy and Wilson shot you.”

“ _Well_ ,” he replied haughtily, making minute adjustments to his suit and cuffs, “Supposing I am dead, then- do you really think it’s polite to remind me how I died? And let me ask you, Nick- if I’m dead, what does that make you?”

Nick passed a hand over his face and sank further into his chair, “Mad. I’m mad.” A thought occurred to him. “Wait- this morning- was that you, too, or is there lots of different versions of you?”

He laughed. It twinkled like fairy lights. “No, no, that was me. There’s only one Jay Gatsby.” And he sipped at a cocktail glass that appeared in his hand out of nowhere, toasting Nick as if it were their first time meeting all over again.

Nick slumped as far down in his chair as he could go and buried his face in his hands, paperwork long forgotten. “Dear God,” he mumbled faintly.

“There, there, old sport,” comforted Gatsby, perching on the edge of the desk with his legs crossed and a perky expression lit up his face. He patted Nick on the shoulder; his hand passed straight through. “Even if you _are_ going mad, they say all the best writers are, hmm?”

***

Jay flicked in and out all day- Nick kept up calling him ‘Jay’ because he couldn’t think of anything else to call him- there and then not there like seeing a world from a train window. Thankfully, no one at the office had twigged a thing and he staggered through his front door in peace, then promptly tripped over the clothes he hadn't picked up that morning, sand still coated the back of his- oh. With haste perhaps unbecoming of the severity of the situation and the grace of a new-born colt, he made for his jacket, discarded on the ninth step up. In the pocket was the hairbrush, made of solid gold and probably worth his life twice over, cradled in the palms of his two hands. No sooner had he touched the damn thing then a familiar presence walked down the stairs to greet him.

“Normally old sport I’d say something against thievery,” said as he shrugged into a spotless evening jacket of pale robin-egg blue. “But I suppose I’ll let it go just this once.”

“Dear God,” without looking any further than the step ahead of him, Nick turned tail and raced to the kitchen, threw open one of the windows and heaved in the cool air. “Dear God.” Those were the only words he was able to say for quite a long time. Once he was quite recovered from _that_ , he searched for a full bottle of gin amidst the empty ones.

“Ah-“began Jay apologetically from his seat on the draining board, “d’you think this wise, old sport?”

Sunlight glinted off the bottle as he placed it down next to Jay’s knee—on second thought- he slid it across the counter top and watched it go straight through the silky cloth. At Jay’s murmur of discomfort, Nick slid it back. He pointed a finger in the ghost’s direction and without sparing a glance said, “Not a word- I’m not talking to you.”

He mimed zipping his lips shut.

Nick turned away and sobbed once, fighting to keep his face level, he took a deep breath in and surreptitiously watched how the thing wearing Jay’s face also still went through the motions of breathing. He looked… happier. Or, perhaps not happy, more of a… calm. As if all the dreams he had overshot and failed to grasp had come true after all or as if they no longer mattered. His ghost had achieved what Jay Gatsby could not.

Sighing in surrender, Nick upturned the bottle so it fell on its side- through the waistband of the expensive, see-through suit- and began to glug away into the sink. “Perhaps it _is_ time to cut back a little,” though he did not mean to admit aloud, it was just instinct when one had company. “Even going mad and seeing ghosts, my first thought wasn’t to quit drinking.” _Then again if I’m going mad, where’s the harm in becoming a drunk?_

Could he drink himself to death before he lost all of his senses? Nick didn’t think so- it was a race he wanted no part in, though he could already feel how the wind was beginning to pound in his skull and send the hem of his shirt trembling over his shoulders. Off in the hallway, the clock struck six and he winced with every chime- any normal weeknight he would be halfway through a bottle by now, watching the sea-level decrease inch by inch as it burned down his throat. Before his resolve could leave him, as it would within the next hour he had no doubt, he reached into the cupboard again and fumbled for the last bottle in the house, determined it would meet the same end.

Once, in childhood and too young to really comprehend, one aged relative or another had told the parlour at large a story of another relative so dependent upon alcohol they had crouched on all fours on the draining board and licked the last drops from the plug hole in the sink. Certainly he wasn’t to that point yet, but Nick could only pity the poor drunk who had suffered such a trauma they no longer wanted to make any sense of the world at all.

Unable to uncork the bottle, temper got the better of him and he threw it into the sink instead where it shattered into a tornado of sharp icicles. One tiny splinter scratched across his face dangerously close to his left eye and he nearly laughed and only held of doing that by chewing on his shirt collar.

“That’s the spirit!” Jay chirped, voice lovely and bright with all manner of delight in it. “Well done, old sport, _sup_ er! How about some dinner?”

“Don’t-“ he glared at his socks and dragged one arm away from his face to point a warning at his uninvited guest. A drunk perhaps he was but- “I’ll be damned if I have counselling from a ghost.” With a whoosh of exhale, he decided he’d used all the energy he had for today and struggled up the stairs to bed before his day could get any worse.

The day ended the same way it started: with Jay Gatsby watching him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please be warned this chapter has a LOT of period typical attitudes about homophobia, mental health, women and all sorts of stuff

His story to Jordan Baker was nearly the whole truth and she listened to it all, perfectly still, sitting in a big chair. He left out the but where Jay’s ghost was sitting next to him, hair at a jaunty angle and sipping coffee the way they did in the cafes at Paris. And the part where he had been told the story of James Gatz. And the excessive drinking after the funeral.

_But enough of the truth_ Nick consoled himself. Enough that he had left things in order and not been swept away from her by the indifferent sea that was New York.

“Alright,” her eyes were pale and with her chin tilted she could have been an illustration in a golf magazine. “I’m engaged to a man now.”

Jay made a face and tutted, Nick- as he had been doing for the last four days- ignored him steadily. “Alright,” Nick agreed, for he’d no reason to doubt her. From his limited experience with women, he thought perhaps she wanted him to be surprised or angry or show somehow that he cared in the fierce, violent way men did, but he didn’t have it in him. “Are you happy, Miss Baker?”

She raised her eyebrows though did seriously consider the question. At length she replied. “No, I don’t think I am. Or if I am, this isn’t how everyone else describes it. But I’m not unhappy either, so I suppose this’ll do until something else happens.”

“Tell her she’s being an idiot!” Jay shouted in his ear, almost loud enough to echo. Under his scrutiny, Jordan gave no indication she could hear anything but the traffic floating up to the roof terrace where they sat. It really was just _him_ then. “Tell her!”

Flinching, Nick lost his nerve and got up and started saying goodbye.

“Nevertheless, you did throw me over,” Jordan said suddenly; though her words were tinged with urgency her face did not change a bit. “I don’t give a damn about you now, but it was a new experience for me. I felt a little dizzy for a while.” With all the grace in the world, she extended her hand. Without hesitation, Nick shook it.

“Oh,” she added, still without getting up herself or any emotion escaping onto her face. “Do you remember a conversation we once had about driving a car?”

Sifting through the cotton wool in his head didn’t provide any answers- the tremors missing the drink had finally worn off last night though his brain was still sluggish. “Not exactly.”

“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver.”

“Oh- yes.”

The first smile of the conversation leaked over her face, as subtle and small as a tiny river. “Well, I met another bad driver didn’t I? I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was a secret pride.”

“Ha ha _wrong_!” shouted Jay directly in her face, so animated and bet at the middle to get right into her face it looked a little as if he was imitating the cluck- cluck of a chicken. _Shut up_ Nick thought, buildings falling and crumbling around him as he thought how Jay alive would never dream of being so rude to a lady. “Tell her Nick!” he rounded on him, arms wide and smile bright. “Tell her she’s wrong!”

As Nick shook his head he saw Jordan’s minute frown as he looked into Jay’s eyes and not hers, “Are you alright, Nick?”

It warmed his heart that he sill meant enough to her to ask and at the same time he didn’t give a damn.

“I’m thirty,” he said. “I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honour.”

Jordan didn’t answer. Angry and tired and tremendously sorry, Nick turned his back on her and slowly made his way down to the street. At his side, Jay was an angry dark thunder cloud buzzing as loud as a bee, irritation shaking off of him. “You know, old sport,” he started at last, rather frostily, “when one is visible to only one person in particular, it can get rather impolite and- lonely, when one is constantly ignored.”

Rolling his eyes and speaking out of the corner of his mouth Nick retorted hotly: “Don’t you ‘old sport’ me, you’re _dead_!”

“You just can’t let that go, can you?”

“No! Now shut up or I’ll leave you here- I mean it!” he stressed as his train pulled into the Grand Central. “I’ll find a way somehow or another, now will you just-“ he stopped talking and stepped aside t let a mother and baby go past. Barely into her twenties and dressed in a good yellow coat, her smooth features folded into a suspicious glare at how he was talking to himself. Nic found an empty carriage and took the seat opposite Jay.

Outside the window, the world streamed past in a gush of colours; daylight savings had begun and the sunset greeted halogen lights a lot sooner these days, soft pastels floating down gently into sleep as the nights drew in. It made his thirties seem a lot dimmer, these dim nights. Opening the window took a tricky manoeuvre as the train rocked, but Nick was a practised veteran of commuting and soon enough was breathing in the thick air- dusty however the train was going fast enough it was cold and thus _felt_ like fresh air.

Though it went against every sensible thought in his head, Nick risked a glance over at Jay. Despite the constant motion of the train, he remained s stable a force of nature as he ever was, tonight in an emerald green evening suit that was pressed and laundered perfectly and his golden hair shone in the soft warm glow of the _Arrow Collars_ billboard until the train passed in front of T J Eckleburg’s eyes instead and the gold slid away into the navy night. Surreptitiously in his pocket, Nick ran a finger over the handle of the solid gold hairbrush. Foolish, to keep it on him even out in the city, where any act of God was a possibility, but when he had tried that first morning after seeing Jay to leave it behind, the idea had left him quaking harder than the need to drink.

Ignoring Jay Gatsby was as difficult in death as it was in life- he was the absolute embodiment of a miracle and his personality and sheer _self_ threw everyone into orbit around him, enchanted by his money and his dreams and his smile. Even now, as he sulked across from in him in business class with folded arms and a studious pout, he was the most beautiful man he had ever seen and no doubt if he had been available to everyone else they, too, would have found him a near-incomprehensible idea.

“How’s it feel,” he asked, unable the keep the pettiness out of his voice, “No longer being the centre of attention?”

“Hmph!” he withdrew into his shoulders a little further. “Dull.”

Under the floorboards, the wheels whirled and switched tracks and the journey began again, slow to gain momentum as they passed through the Valley of Ashes. Jay turned his head away when Wilson’s garage rolled past, a note on the forecourt declaring it was under new management. Against his wishes, sympathy plucked the strings of his heart to the tune of an old war ditty.

Jay was still the most beautiful man he had ever met. Even translucent. And he sighed and let his heart collapse in on itself- relenting had become a habit of his since moving here and he hadn’t the strength to so anything else any longer. “Alright,” he steadfastly shoes not to notice how quickly Jay’s head snapped round to fix on him with glistening anticipation. “Alright. Like it or not, I’m going mad. I may as well talk to you.”

Jay’s smile was worth everything in the world.

Nick crossed his arms and tried to sound stern, “Some ground rules,”

“Ground rules?”

“One- _no_ touching.” For emphasis, he moved away from where Jay had been trying to lean closer to him. “Two: no making a scene in public. People’ll think I’m mad.”

Jay let it hang in the air for a beat, then two, then his lips started to twitch up and Nick joined in with his laughter. “Alright,” he repeated, wiping tears of laughter away as the train turned a corner and the last of the sunlight sparkled over Jay’s face. “Alright.”

***

“Well, old sport, what did the boss say?”

“You were right, Jay. Farming’s too risky a business for us to invest in at the moment.”

“Good, told you I know a thing or two about the stock market. Now, what’s for dinner, old sport, I know you missed lunch.”

***

“Where were you today?”

“Oh around here and there, old sport. Here and there.”

“Big business for criminals in the after life?”

“Hell’s full of ‘em, old sport.”

“As if you’d go to Hell. You were the best man in the entire world!”

“...Thank you, Nick.”

“Don’t mention it. Only, I missed you at breakfast, for lack of a better word.”

“Really?”

“Don’t get big-headed, just... I’m used to you now, that’s all.”

***

“Nick! Nick, wake up, it’s just a dream!”

“It wasn’t.”

“I know.”

“Of course you damn well do, you’re in my head! I can’t hide anything from you can I?”

“Stop imagining me, then!”

...

“Do you ever go back to your house, Jay?”

“All I need is right here.”

***

“How was your day?”

“Well I’m still a ghost, so does that answer your question?”

“Not funny. Where do you go when I can’t see you?”

“I’m always with you, old sport. What, can’t you see me?”

***

“Ah Nick, you’re home!”

“Oh no.”

“Old sport?”

“You called me ‘Nick’. Something must have happened.”

“Now, now, what did I say about over-thinking, old sport? Nothing’s the matter. Only a letter came for you today and that’s your mother’s handwriting.”

“Oh _great_.”

***

For all the atrocities that the War had wrought, there was a singular quality about family gatherings that mat made them far worse, and it took all Nick’s patience to get through the Thanksgiving weekend without snapping. He answered questions about his job, his house, his life, his girl, his lack of a girl, his prospects, his money, his cousin, his dog, his birthday, his Christmas plans and then more questions about his job his house and his life and tried not to scream.

N the end, he got rather drunk, answered an aunt’s question a bit too waspishly and locked himself in the second floor bathroom feeling guilty about it. “I know I’m going mad,” he said to Jay quietly. “But much longer with all this and I’m liable to snap.” Bathroom tiles sliding along the floor and dizzy with questions ringing in his ears, he leant forward far enough to rest his forehead on his knees and cradled Jay’s hairbrush in his hands, not minding the bristles poking his face. The cold metal warmed and fogged over as he breathed.

“There, there, old sport.”

He laughed, “Thanks.”

“Do they know you’re..?” the sentence died off in search of a way to put it delicately.

Nick had had quite enough of polite society and its dainty finger sandwiches and toe-dipping. “A queer? Yes, but not out loud they don’t.”

Complete silence followed- his father was a very sensible man and so had not even thought to place a clock, of all things, in the bathroom, so there was not even any soft ticking with which to pry open the atmosphere suffocating them. And then eventually Nick said, “I wish I could touch you. I’m a writer but I can’t say all the things I think about you in my own head. I don’t even know if there’s words for the things men do with each other- not, not what the world calls it. Gentle words.”

“And I wish I could touch you, old sport.” Soft silks rustled over one another as Jay sat down on the floor next to the empty bath. He’d put on a smart black suit and diamond cufflinks for the occasion of meeting Nick’s parents, though all of his clothes were so fine it was hard to tell what would count as his Sunday Best. “Perhaps a little less drinking tomorrow, what d’you say? You’re rather maudlin when squiffy.”

He clutched his hairbrush and pressed his skin against it hoping for a benediction, “My father’s going to kill me.”

As if on cue, Mr Carraway (for he was Mr, even inside Nick’s own head) rapped on the door once. “Nicholas, my office. Now, please.”

In lieu of responding he staged to his feet and managed to climb out of the empty bath without slipping, though the waistband of his trousers was cold where the tap had dripped on him. Tripping to the door, the golden handle of the hairbrush sweaty in his palm, Jay raised his hand in a parting gesture, “If he kills you, meet me back here.”

It made Nick feel a bit better and he smiled a smile that was gone by the time he had opened the door. To his father’s impassive face, he didn't look. “Yes sir.”

When he blinked he was standing tail between his legs in front of his father’s desk, his father sitting behind it. “I'm sorry, sir,” he had not heard a word of any of it but his father’s mouth had stopped moving and that usually was the right thing to say to his father. _How curious a thing it is, to be a child again when you go home_. “May I go now?”

Like a bull, his father snorted, “And do what, Nick, drink some more?”

It was probably the truth and so he kept his mouth shut. Through the window, the world had gone completely dark and he could only see the reflection of the back of Mr Carraway’s head, inoffensive in the lamplight, ruling over his study and his work with the iron fist that came naturally to middleclass business men over fifty when their world changed around them. Though he could candidly not say if he and his father had ever shared a ‘close’ relationship, being a key figure and house mate in one’s life since birth gave a man an uncanny perception when one stood before him chastened and irrevocably changed. His father’s face shifted in the way that- in the absence of any other similar emotion- had to be described as ‘softened’. Or at least a cease fire, temporarily.

“Is it New York, Nick? Are you wanting to come home- _think_ before you answer me, boy, I know you’d stay even if it wasn’t working out because you’d feel guilty about wasting money.”

Nowhere else in the house was his father at home so much as he was in his study. The dark oak panels, the brass fittings, the oil lamps, the books, the steadfast refusal to change anything as the tsunami grew higher and higher, waiting to crash. Quite possibly there was nowhere else in the world did his father fit so perfectly as within his study. Nick felt rather bad for being out of place and ruining his sanctuary in his one nice suit and smelling of whiskey; he curled his fist round the hairbrush in his pocket, “I don’t want to leave New York.” _If only t’were that simple_.

“Hmph!” his shadow fell longer as he leaned towards the desk. “I’ve been thinking about asking you back, anyway, you’re not the same here as you are there.”

“Perhaps that’s because of the company I have to keep here, Father.”

“Perhaps.” What traits he hadn't inherited from his parents could fill up an entire novel: one of them was the way his father had of scanning a person with his grey eyes, taking them apart and reassembling them in his mind piece by piece. Unconsciously, Nick’s fingers curled round the freezing grip of a Winchester Model 1907, even colder than his toes as the sergeant bullied them until they could strip and clean their rifles in the dead of night.

One boy in the company, whose name he misremembered every time as Jacques, could strip and clean and reassemble the fastest. The Germans saw the moonlight reflecting off the bullet he was gripping between his teeth and shot his head clean off.

“I’ve heard about the business in new York, though- not from your cousin.” The sneer his lip curled into told you everything you needed to know about Mr Carraway’s side of the family. “Do you think you’re better than us now, Nick, is that the problem here?”

“No sir,” Nick replied, so dutifully it took him a moment to realise it was true. “Rather, I think I have… outgrown the world. Not- not being big-headed or superior, you understand, but… mentally. Or morally, I don’t know; I’ve just learned what I can and can’t live with, I suppose.”

“You’ve outgrown the world.”

“Yessir.”

With a crack in his composure almost palpable, his father huffed in exasperation and sat back in his chair, turning it at a jaunty angle and resting one forearm on the desk in front of him in that way authority figures did when confronting a precocious subordinate. “Jesus Christ, Nick.”

“Hmm?”

“Sometimes- sometimes I can’t tell what you’re saying that’s true from what you’re saying because you’ve come up with a line for one of your silly novels and you want it to be true or you think it sounds good.”

His heart rose towards his throat as if hooked on a fish line, “My novels aren’t silly!”

“Tell that to your mother, not me. come tell _me_ about your novels when they’ve made you some money.”

“I’m going to see Uncle Gerald tomorrow. And I met a man in New York and slept with another.”

Like swatting a fly, his father slapped the desk hard enough for the sound to rattle the window panes. Eyes darting to the door, “Don’t you say such things where people could hear!” he snapped. “And-“ he continued at a reasonable volume “-don’t change the subject because it’s what you’d do in a goddamn novel.”

“I got a man killed in New York.”

Seeing both the man in front of him _and_ the refection of the back of him in the window made for a very strange effect on his drunken brain, almost as if seeing him completely for the first time, as if he’d been visually impaired his entire life and only now saw him in crisp clarity of still water. “Go to bed, Nick,” Mr. Carraway sighed, voice full of an emotion that had he been addressing anyone not his son would have been disgust. “Unless there’s some way for me to help you, go to bed.”

No- no- this was _his father Mr Carraway_ , this was Mr Carraway, who had always been the stern foundation of youth, the immoveable force whose knee he had addressed and received all answers in return- how could he not help him?

_You’re a writer, Nick, find the right words!_

“What do I do in New York?” he needed one thing in this mortal world, and that was a drink.

“You’ve a job, haven’t you? Do your job. Get out the house once in a while- that’s useless advise, knowing you, but your mother tells me I have to say it.”

“Do you love me?”

A blank stare met his question, “You’re my son.”

“But do you love me?”

“You’re my son.”

_That doesn’t answer my question!_ Only to his father, to Mr Carraway, to practical businessmen over the age of fifty, it did.

“Father.”

“What?”

“I love you. Goodnight.”

“You’re my son” he repeated, as if he was stating the obvious. “Next time, Nick, next time- well shit, there are some things you just can’t live with. Ask your Uncle Gerald how to cope. Good night.”

***

“That went well!” exclaimed Jay brightly as Nick closed his bedroom door and sunk down to the floor. The pale yellow pyjamas he had changed into blended in seamlessly with the floral wallpaper. “Who did you kill, again?” _As if he’s reviewing a movie_ , Nick thought tiredly, working out the know in his tie with drunken fingers. Young writer has no answers and no love? Or something that’d be a catch in Hollywood.

“You” Nick spelt it out for him, wishing he’d stopped in the kitchen for a drink. “I killed you” before he could even finish the last world, he’d burst into tears. “Don’t- _don’t_ \- stay there, rule number one, remember? I- I’m alright, I just- _if I had only called you earlier_. You’d have come inside when the butler told you it was me, you wouldn’t’ve been out there when Wilson came and- and-“ he could expand no further on the matter.

Slowly, Jay sat back, contemplating the pathetic mess he made with his heads tilted to one side. He looked like a Renaissance painting or a man who’d kiss Clara Bow. It was as if he had never contemplated Nick’s part in his death before. “Okay,” things were not okay in the slightest. “That’s… hmm, I’m afraid you’ve rather stumped me, old sport. You’re right, you killed me. Damn.” The laughter that burbled from his mouth was green and startling and lit up the whole room. “If I’m dead and it’s your fault, what’s that make you?”

***

“So,” how he had spent last night seeping on the floorboards under his bed to hide from Jay’s constant screaming wasn’t commented on by either of them. “Once you’ve blinked the sun out of your hangover, will you tell me who Uncle Gerald is?”

Ducking into the garage, Nick breathed a sigh of relief at the shade and checked his pocket to see if the hairbrush was still there. It was. It felt dirty and exhilarating, his father talking about money and Nick holding almost more of it than he’d ever have without him knowing. He pulled out his sunglasses, contemplated them, then decided he’d be doing fifty miles an hour with no one to care and jammed them on with one hand and unlocked the car door with the other. Replying when there was a chance of anyone walking in wasn’t worth the risk so he left it until he had reversed on the sight of his mother waving from the window and started the snub-nosed automobile in a swift mosey toward the road. “He’s an Uncle of mine and he’s called Gerald.”

There were three branches of the Carraway family after Great Uncle Carraway had been overtaken by the passage of time. Mr Carraway, Nick’s father, brother of Mrs Belinda Fay _nee_ Carraway, who married twice-estranged second cousin William Buchanan for his wealth. And their mutual sibling, Gerald, who neither spoke to. It took five miles to explain the family tree in its entirety another four to explain how the uncle had become persona non gratis.

“From what I remember he went to the sanatorium in… 95, 96? A year after getting married, I think. I can’t remember ever seeing him as a child, so around then. His wife, Mrs Something or other had a son from her first husband and everything was alright then, you see, because he’d take over the business. Only he died in the War, and my father’s the youngest of all three and can’t inherit instead, so they had to drag Uncle Gerald out of the sanatorium to run the business again. My father-“ he cleared his throat. “I don’t think he likes that Uncle Gerald went there, or that he’s back out; but it’s better than letting my Aunt and eventually Tom take it over, so… what are you doing in the footwell, Jay?”

The reply he got was in a very small voice, “I don’t much like cars now, old sport, not since…”

“Oh, I see. We’re almost there, only another two miles to go- Uncle Gerald lives quite of the way.”

“How on _earth_ does he stand the drive to work every morning?”

“Ah, he doesn’t _go_. My father runs the place, like he always has done. Any important papers or contacts, he’ll drive down here and get Uncle Gerald to sign but since he got out of the sanatorium he’s never set foot in the factory. I don’t even think he gets out the house. His wife separated years ago, from what my mother says she’s arranged- his wife, that is- the grocer take him food and supplies once and week and that’s it.”

“When he dies it won’t half cause a mess.”

“Probably. That’s why m father’s angry with him- he won’t sign the business over. I’m not sure what laws are involved, exactly, only if he doesn’t get my uncle to sign the business to him specifically then it’ll go to Aunt Fay. We’re here.”

Nick didn’t get out of the car. “My father is… practical.” Snow covered the eaves of the house- it was just a house on the very outskirts of a city in the Midwest and there were no trees, but it _felt_ like there should be trees, as if Uncle Gerald was some Brothers Grimm character, or a hermit, or one of those pole-sitters who you got to hearing about in the papers. “Is it possible he's right? I mean- he’s angry, because if he’s out of the sanatorium he might as well try to get better. But I’m not supposed to know that, I just overheard.”

Above the roof, the sky was a plain grey morgue slab of slate and completely empty. Even birds didn’t fly over Uncle Gerald’s house, it appeared, the idea made Nick feel rather sorry. The door opened back into the porch and out stomped a scowling figure with pure white hair styled in a way that had been fashionable twenty years ago. Uncle Gerald, though Nick had expected him to have a cane. Glaring, he waited until Nick had climbed out of the care before venturing any further out.

“Come on, boy,” he grumbled, rubbing his hands over his jacket at the biting cold air. “Come on, come, ain't got all day.” Without a handshake or any other sort of greeting, he turned and stomped back into the house and left the door open for him to follow.

“How are you, Uncle Gerald?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m… glad.”

“Hmph!” when he did that, his nose turned up the same way his father’s did and Nick relaxed incrementally. The hallways was dark, being south-facing, chasing past doors not so much ajar as hanging off their hinges and offering pale blue glimpses of Chesterfield sofas and empty rooms before turning a corner and opening up into a light and airy (and surprisingly pleasant) kitchen. “Might not know your name, thought looking like that you’re your father’s son. Just know if he’s sent you here to get ne to sign anything I wouldn’t have let you in, now- sit and have some’f that. Heard t’was your thirtieth the other month.”

Uncle Gerald pried the lid from a rusty old cake tin and cut him a slice of golden rod cake. The cake was stale, the jam was tart, it was a struggle to eat politely with how crumbly it was and the tea he served it with hadn't stewed long enough- it was the best cake Nick had ever tasted and he wished he wasn’t too shy to ask for seconds. “How did you know it was my birthday?”

“Got a calendar, don’t I?” nodding his groomed quiff at the calendar hanging on the wall by the stove, he pulled out a chair and sat down and sipped his own tea.

‘Nephew’s visit’ was pencilled in for today’s date and circled twice. The rest of the month was empty of anything.

“Oh… um… how are you Uncle Gerald?”

“Hmph, you’re just like your father- says your name so often it gets yer goat, like he thinks you’ve forgot your own name?”

Politely he took a sip of his tea and nodded.

“Told you: I’m here. Now tell me what you want, see’n as you’re the first person to visit since I got out. Though… no one came visiting when I was in, neither, so s’pose I can’t call ‘em two-faced.”

Behind him, Jay was fussing with his cufflinks in the reflection from the copper kettle; the spout shone behind him and made his belt buckle twinkle, a star about to wink out of existence the way farmsteads did at night. “I do like how he's done his hair, old sport- d’you think it’d suit me?”

“Why did you go to the sanatorium, Uncle?”

“Hmph, I don’t like talking ‘bout it and I shan’t. Though it weren’t called sanatorium then, just a home. Meant to be for tuberculosis, but weren’t nothing wrong with my lungs.”

“I only ask because...” looking over, Jay was there. “I think I’m going mad.”

Scrupulously, Uncle Gerald sipped his tea and smacked his lips together, glaring up and down at his nephew. From what Nick could recall the man was not yet even sixty: his youth had been taken out of him. it might not have been given to _Time_ the way other men’s was but he had ended up at fifty eight the same way all men did, one long and hard day at a time. The grey clothes he wore bore the faded and threadbare patches of use and long-wear, with the cuts that had been popular in the last century and set off with a pair of sensible walking boots stained with spatters of orange mud. And, like his father, he looked totally at home in his kitchen. Nick wondered how it must feel to have carved out a place in the world specifically for yourself or even just to fit into your own skin. Yet… the signs were there, if one cared to look from the corner of the eye. The shock of white hair, mouth tugged down on one side, the dips and folds of his clothes that were too big for him and the puckered seams that told a story of a man freely released rapidly gaining weight only to lose it all again too quickly; the loose fold of his tie because he no longer had the strength in his hands to tie it properly. Nick wanted to reach across and re-tie it for him, then realised he wouldn’t be able to untie it himself come evening.

“Usually the people who say they’re going mad are already mad.”

He swallowed, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Don’t do nothing that could put you in a sanatorium.”

Speaking round the grip fear had clenched round his throat was a struggle, “No?”

“no!” Uncle Gerald’s yell split apart the sky and he leaned forward- his eyes were darting about frantically and Nick could hear his breaths rattling in his chest. “No, you don’t go there, they- they- they fucking- _you don’t go there_ , alright? Oh, it’s all flowers at first! ‘Let’s help you, Mr Carraway’, or ‘we’re here to help, Mr Carraway’, well now I have to piss sat down, ‘cuz holding my cock hurts- I didn’t want kids so it don’t matter too much but it’s about _choice_ damn you!”

“they tried to sterilize you?”

“They did sterilize me. good job they did of it, too. Quick. Efficient. Painless. And every time I see my own cock I start shaking. I’ll lock you up in this house if you try and go to a sanatorium.”

“Then what do I _do_?” Nick begged, screeching his chair across the tiled floor and begging, begging, begging at his knees. “He’s dead and I keep seeing him- talking to him, even. Since he died I’ve just been clenching my heart in my fist. Have I gone mad, uncle, have I?”

“My son died and I started seeing him, but I hallucinated people ‘fore then as well so maybe that don’t count” and they were laughing, holding on to one another and laughing, laughing, because it wasn’t funny though it was a bit, laughing at the ludicrousness of it all and holding on to one another to keep from falling out of their chairs and then laughing at how silly the other looked laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing as much as they could before it all came to an end.

It took to the bottom of another cup of tea before they spoke again. Part of Nick wanted to stay forever in his uncle’s kitchen- two outcast together, in this room pale yellow like the sun through the curtains on an early morning; hangover forgotten, nothing too bright or obnoxious or dull or grey. Just sitting, at the sturdy table with the smell of home-cooked meals coming off the stove and sitting with his uncle, nothing too shiny and the metal fittings not too polished and no life around them for miles not even birds. And Jay swinging his legs from the counter top.

“You got a job?” his uncle was saying. “Go to work every day. Don’t drink, if you can’t stop drinking, don’t drink. Eat well and brush your teeth; do normal things, though don’t read the paper if’t upsets you. He lived next door, you say? Consider moving. Go mad, it’s not like you’ve any choice, but don’t let it get to you. Anyone finds out, say it’s from the War.”

“It’s not.”

“People’ll accommodate all sortsa queer if you got it in a war,” Uncle Gerald explained sagely.

“You’ve taken this news extraordinarily well.”

“You came to the one man who’s got a vested interest keeping people out sanitoriums.”

He squirmed in his seat, “Can I write to you, once I’m back?”

“Shit do what you want. I’ll hafta get the grocer to post the letters if I write back- shit, why not?”

“Alright. And- thank you. I, I had best be off else I’ll miss my train, and I can’t waste the ticket- Mother sent it, said it was a birthday present though she forgot my birthday.”

“Hmph, outta sight outta mind- that’s the logic they used putting me in there as well. Well, to hell with ‘em, you do your job and you keep even a keel as you can. The problem- the problem-“ his animation grew as his words gained momentum, shaking Nick’s hand fiercer and clutching his arm “-the problem is everyone wants to be holy and we just want to be good- don’t let them put you in one of those places, promise me!”

“I won’t” _have a choice in the matter_.

“Good. Good. And you write me, once you get back. Come on now, you’ll miss your train.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> be warned the end of this chapter is quite triggering

In the liminal space between Thanksgiving and Christmas, that strange time of the year where anticipation was as abundant as snowflakes and time felt unrealistic; so much so that Nick would never be able to say for sure what day it was when he let Jay into his house. _Why_ he did that was because he saw him first from the corner of his eye and thought him a visitor, then turned round and realised it wasn’t. Rolling his eyes, he held the door open and let Jay brush past him- he was just about to put the groceries away, why did Jay always come at the most inconvenient times? Jay shot him a strange look as he stepped over the threshold, no doubt wondering why Nick hadn't locked the door anyway and made him walk through it as he normally would.

“You look better,” Nick greeted without greeting- in the calm water of the December afternoon, standing against his plain wallpaper he looked almost corporeal and Nick ached from intestines to teeth to be able to touch him and clutched the groceries so hard he feared he’d shatter a milk bottle. The force of his personality made him shine, as if every good thing in the world had come from or been made by him. Frost drops sparkled on the strands of gold hair like stars- one advantage of being a ghost was that he’d no need to dress for the weather, for he was wearing the trousers to a velvet suit but not the jacket, just his immaculate white silk shirt and crisp blue suspenders the buckles of which, undoubtedly, were real silver.

Peering over the brown paper bags, Nick made a game of imagining he could see his face in the shiny brogues, glistening like one of the cars lying dormant in the huge garage across the lawn.

Jay frowned. “Thank you, old sport,” he said at last. Following him to the kitchen, “Are you… not going to ask where I’ve been all this time?”

For the first time in over a week, Nick actually laughed. “What would be the point in that?” In death Jay was as obscure about his comings and goings as he had been in life. _Here and there_ he mouthed around a smile. “Here and there, no doubt” he muttered as an aside to himself just out of Jay’s earshot. Louder, he added, “Someone’s cut your lawn today, did you notice?” and indicated his head in the direction of the window, through which could be seen the great Gatsby mansion, lawn newly trimmed and the occasional light peppered across the huge white face. Nowhere near the blaring sodium World Fair it had been in its heyday.

Jay looked shocked enough to stop frowning, nodding his head absently, “Servants no doubt, old sport. Are you sure you’re quite alright?”

“Never better.” Automatic and leaden and not entirely untrue. Servants- _someone must have brought the place_ , he thought grimly. How could you buy something off a dead man? “Wolfsheim’s involvement, I imagine.”

“Naturally, old sport.”

“Ah.” No longer hungry, Nick turned away from the window and leaned against the counter with his eyes closed, forcing the tears back down his throat.

“…Old sport?” Cracking open his vision, the electric lightbulb fanned out into a sun-dog and Jay looked like an angel. “Would you be opposed to me… staying tonight?”

“Never.”

Jay smiled. Yes, definitely an angel.

***

“Any plans for Christmas, old sport?”

“I’m not even thinking about Christmas until after the fifteenth, so stop talking.”

***

“I’m not quite sure what you’re asking me, Nick, I always leave the guestroom spotless, don’t I? Wait- why are you laughing?”

***

“Know anything more about farming?”

“’More’ old sport? No, farming’s a risky business for, well, farmers. Not been doing too well since the War, if I remember correctly. Good for bootleggers, though- Meyer’s been talking over the idea of buying some farmland as a way to get alcohol from place to place; besides land’s as good collateral as any. Does this mean you’ve been thinking about my offer to-“

“What? No, just some more papers come up at work and the boss wanted to know what I thought about it.”

***

“Is that what you do all day, then- hang around watching Wolfsheim?”

“Mostly- we owed each other several favours, before all this business started; now we’ve at least cleared up a few of our debts. Besides it’s hardly like a dead man can throw parties, is it old sport?”

***

“What are you writing at this hour?”

“I couldn’t sleep and it was this or drink.”

“Ah… I commend your willpower, old sport. What’s the bright idea this time?”

“Just my memoirs, if they can be called that. I’m at the part where you die and then come back as a ghost- it’s all very dramatic, which is quite in character of you.”

***

“Nick?” he called, shutting the front door as quietly as he could. “Nick, old sport, I’m back!”

“Hello!” Nick’s head popped into view from the pantry doorway and disappeared again. “How was your day?”

“Dull,” Jay groaned, loosening his tie. “Yours?”

“Brilliant! The novel I couldn’t finish was-“ Jay was ashamed to say that he stopped listening properly, but he couldn’t help it. Coming back to the little cottage and listening as his only friend in the world talked about his writing made all the tension drain from his shoulders. Being ‘dead’, as Nick would phrase it, was _hard_ \- the actual being shot bit was easy, even if it said something about how easily bribed New York policeman where. But it was the staying dead that he found immensely boring: no parties, no restaurants, no invitations, Meyer had done such a good job swearing his tailor to secrecy that he couldn’t even have a conversation with the frightened man. And when a gentleman was measuring your inside leg, conversation was somewhat of a necessity. Jay was no writer like Nick was- being relegated to the anonymity of boot-legging was just dull and boring and he hated it and couldn’t wait for everyone to forget what he looked like so he could come back.

His attention was dawn back to the conversation as Nick stopped a few feet away and examined him closely; the other week he’d made a comment about dressing ‘for winter’ and ever since he’d taken care to do so. The desire for Nick’s approval almost made him feel as if he was blushing. “You’ve been looking better lately, did you know?”

His smile almost cracked his face in tow, “Thank you, old sport. I suspect it’s to do with the company I’m keeping.”

Nick’d turned away and was already halfway to the dining room when he had said it But Jay could tell how his shoulders rearranged themselves he was pleased.

That was one of the most startling changed he’d noticed, since coming back, how instead of waiting for an answer, he’d resume what he was doing and simply assume he’d follow. He also, when making food or tea, served himself and never offered him any, though having never dined with the man before his untimely death, Jay couldn’t say if that was different from before. There’d been no chance to observe Nick around others, though Jay had no reasons to suspect he was anything except impeccably mannered with them and thus, only he bore the brunt of this strange behaviour. It was really fine, really- things naturally would change after dying and Jay Gatsby had finally come to realise you couldn’t repeat the past. If queer table manners were the cost of his friend’s forgiveness, then it was a bargain.

A plate smashed on the floor. Jay flinched and blinked trenches away before his gaze came to focus on Nick, on the other side of the table, his now-empty hands clutching the back of a chair to remain upright as the colour drained from his face. “Why are there two of you?” he asked.

Jay’s eyes darted over to where Nick was staring, “I’m not sure what you mean, old sport. There’s no one else-“

In a burst of sound Nick had knocked another plat to the floor in his haste to grab a knife. “I’m not playing around, Jay!” as his voice grew louder his face grew paler. He was shaking but he held the knife steady where it was pointing at him. “Who the hell are you?” and Jay realised the first sentence had been directed not at him but this mysterious _other_ , who was meant to be standing next to him and was asking _him_ who he was. _Oh shit_.

Gingerly he stepped closer to Nick and raised his hands when he raised the knife, “Nick… I don’t know wha you’re talking about.”

Nick stepped back one pace, knife between them. “You- why- you’re not see-through” he mumbled flatly.

Trying to let none of his fear show, Jay stepped closer and winced when his hip knocked the chair. Nick froze, except for his eyes, which darted round wildly like bullets ricocheting in a small room. “Don’t!” he snapped as Jay got closer. “Don’t- I don’t- how did you- who are you?”

The last time he had seen a man in such a state, they were shooting him for cowardice. “Old sport-“ then “-Nick-“ in a moment of stillness, he lunged for the knife.

“Don’t touch me!” he exploded, shoving him away- the knife and legs and ribs went everywhere and when they stopped moving they had switched places and blood was leaking down both Nick’s arms where he’d accidentally cut himself. “Rule one is- is- _don’t touch me_. Who the fuck are you- who the fuck are you?”

Any sense of calm was completely shattered and he was screaming through sobs, mouth twisted unhappily downwards. “It’s just me, Nick, it’s just me, it’s just your Jay,” he repeated, trying once again for the knife, but his friend was a trembling, coltish mess and bundle of limbs and wouldn’t stay still, until he eventually had to stop trying for fear he’d cut himself again.

The tip of the knife shook an inch away from his face. “Who are you? Who the fuck are you? Well say something then!” he barked at a spot on the wall five feet away.

Jay stayed quiet and waited until his eyes flickered back to him. “I’m Jay, old sport- Jay Gatsby and I’m your fri- your neighbour. You helped me out with that business with Da- your cousin. Meyer Wolfsheim helped me cover up that mess with Wilson and when I was safe I came to visit you. I came as soon as I could.”

The knife didn’t get any closer but the man holding it did, free hand coming up- at first Jay though to steady the knife but no, and- no, not to strike him either, it appeared- instead it hovered at the knife handle before extending palm-out slowly to touch the collar of his pink suit jacket. In the next step he had shattered. Jay knew not the how or why but he saw Nick shatter in the split second before he hit the floor, able to only look on dizzy as Nick stumbled out of the room in alarm, knocking over furniture as he went.

“Nick?”

Something like a scream echoed down the stairs and a door slammed. From here, he couldn’t hear the lock click though he knew it must have. Slowly, Jay got to his feet and spent too long deliberating whether to pick up a knife of his own or not- _what are you thinking? It’s Nick!_ Suitably chastened, he hurried upstairs and knocked on the door to the spare bedroom. “Nick? Nick, old sport-“

“I’m not going to an asylum!” he hissed, just loud enough to be heard through the door. A regular thumping had taken up the air, which at first Jay had took for the pounding of his own heart in his ears, but now he realised it was coming somewhere from Nick, inside the locked room. “I won’t go to any sanatorium or- or _anything_ like that! I’ll kill myself before I go there!”

“Stop acting mad then!” Jay yelled. A sharp ‘crack’ sounded immediately after and his heart caught in his throat. “What was that- tell me you haven’t got a gun in there!” _he can’t tell you anything if he’s shot himself._

“I’m going mad,” he heard Nick sobbing in between thuds. “Mad, I’m going mad.”

Jay bit his lip and got as close to the door as was humanly possible. So close he could feel the draught under the door on his skin. “Old sport, Nick, please, I won’t- if you tell me you don’t want a doctor I shan’t call one, but please just- tell me how to help you, old sport. I’m scared.” And he was, he realised absently. He was terrified in a way he hadn't been when facing down the barrel of Wilson’s gun, in the way he had been when all hope of Daisy had been taken away. “You’re my best friend Nick,” he said softly. “Hell, you’re my only friend. I don’t care if you’re mad so long as you’re here.”

The door unlocked with a click. His palms were so damp it took three tries to actually open it. In the corner, Nick huddled with his knees drawn up closes; what parts of his face weren’t covered in sweat and tears were covered with snot, his hair dishevelled and his cheeks red. There was a sizable dent in the plasterboard and dust and grit had gotten stick on the cuts on his arms. Jay was just glad to see him, rushing over without thinking, regretting saying he wouldn’t call a doctor and trying to recall who of his many servants had been a medic. Mindful of the panic he caused before, he scooted to a halt just out of arm’s reach but Nick lurched forward and seized him by the collar so he’d no choice.

“You’re the real one then,” Nick sniffed, wiping his nose with the back of his hand- the knife was still clutched in it, clutched by the blade, and his palm was red. His voice sounded tense, as if the minute it cracked so would he.

“What do you mean, old sport?” the way his hair had come out of its pomade it fell in his eyes and shook over his forehead as he shook. It started to annoy Jay so much he reached over and pushed it away with his fingers.

“When did you come back?”

“The day before you had that lunch with your boss. He- he asked your opinion about investing in the farms, I think.”

Nick clutched his fingers tighter and screwed his eyes shut. “Tell me something I wouldn’t know,” he begged, tears falling again.

“Something- um- my mother- Meyer Wolfsheim has six children, all daughters. He’d Jewish _and_ an atheist. He- he…” he trailed off and shrugged helplessly. “What do you want me to say, old sport?”

Even tighter. “I could be making all of that up,” he murmured- faintly, as if he was on the verge of passing out. “How do I know you’re _real_?”

At a loss, Jay squeezed his fingers until he felt both their bones creak and Nick’s eyes shot open and he gasped at the pain- he had green eyes, Jay realised, now he was close enough to see. Blood had trickled into the crease of his neck like a snake and as gingerly as he could he wiped it away with the corner of his handkerchief, watching the red creep up the gold threads of the monogrammed ‘JG’ with morbid fascination, tracing it back to a gash and sizeable lump on Nick’s skull. “What did you do?” he asked, folding up his handkerchief into quarters and pressing it to the wound.

“Tried to crack my skull open,” the reply was so casual, accompanied by a breezy gesture to the dented wall and- and- and- and- he had to let go of Nick’s hand before he broke his fingers.

“Whatever for?”

The blank, skittish look again. A cold breeze flashed against his palm and Jay looked down and frowned to see Nick had handed him his own gold hairbrush. _I’ve been looking for that_. “I took it,” his voice was weak, as if he had screamed himself dry of everything. “After- after your funeral I was going to run away. I ended up in your house- accidentally, I went- I only wanted to go to the beach.”

What did this mean _does he think I’ll be angry with him for taking it?_ Before he could ask, Nick carried on, nodding to the empty bed behind them. “Then I started- started to see you, or, or not _you_ ,” he squeezed Jay’s fingers and Jay instinctually squeezed back. “You were a ghost. I could see right through you, and it- it wasn’t because of the alcohol so stop looking at me like that, because I stopped drinking and you were still here. I didn’t realise all this time- now you’re both here-“ he cried harder and this time did not fight Jay’s arms around him. At a loss as to what to say, Jay kept silent, wondering where Nick kept his first aid kit. Turning his head to look, the room behind them was empty. “I told you- I told you things,” Nick was howling, bringing his arms up to punch his chest, too weak for him to feel it through his suit. “Private things, only I never did, did I? Because it wasn’t you, you _bastard_!” He repeated the insult until it became lost in his garbled and sobbing wet mouth. Luckily, at least, he did not question why Jay didn’t leave any sort of note, which was lucky as Jay has no answer to give him and through the most likely would have broken down in tears too.

When the crying had stopped and the room was significantly darker, he asked, “Can you still see him?”

Nick nodded without looking up.

“Well… that explains _a lot_.”

He laughed, brittle. “I’ve gone fucking mad, Jay, and- and part of me wants to say that it’s okay, because if I’ve got to go mad over anyone of course it’s you but the reality is-“ he raised his head to meet his eyes and gave a sardonic little grin which, with the blood on his teeth, looked ghastly. “Going mad sucks.”

Jay cradled the back of his head and felt the sticky blood on his hand. “I’m sorry. I- there’s nothing I can do to fix this, is there?”

Nick dropped his gaze and rested his forehead on Jay’s shoulder. That was answer enough.

“I’m sure finding out you were live was meant to be a happy thing.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I mean- on the bright side, you’re not dead.”

“And despite the mental breakdown I’ve caused, neither are you.”

“Perhaps I should be-“ he laughed and it was horrible. “Shit, I can’t even go into my own kitchen right now because I’d get blind drunk.”

Jay held him closer. “I don’t think you’d be better off dead, Nick. _I_ wouldn’t be better off if you were dead. Please believe that, if nothing else.”

“Jesus Christ, I don’t know if I’ll believe anything you say ever again.”

Jay winced. _Ouch_ , but, “That’s fair. I don’t believe I’ll be able to let you out of my sight ever again.”

Nick laughed and stumbled to his feet and fell, so Jay half-carried him into the bathroom and set him down on the linoleum at such an angle he didn’t have to turn his back on him to turn on the bath taps. Nick rubbed at his eyes and flinched as Jay flicked a light on. It looked like a crime scene in the light, blood everywhere, knife still clutched in his palm as he knuckled his eyes. Jay crouched beside him and gently tugged the offending item out of his grip, feeling the warmth of Nick’s blood as it spilled over his own wrist and under his sleeve. He tried to remember what had happened to the hairbrush and seemed to recall leaving it on the bedroom floor with a bloody handprint on it.

“I’ll take care of you, Nick, you know that, don’t you?”

Nick sat back against the bath and shrugged, “Well, you know what?”

“What?”

“Thirty minutes ago you thought I was either going to stab you or shoot myself, so I suppose things at least can’t get any worse.”

Jay laughed and the smile dropped away from his face quickly but Nick carried on smiling, eyes focused on the spot of his left shoulder where the bullet had grazed him. He didn’t speak again until midnight tolled on a clock somewhere in the distance. “It’s Christmas?”

“Not quite yet,” Jay refuted, though to be quite honest he had lost track of the days himself. “Nearly, though, Nearly.”

“Well shit,” Nick tilted his head back and grinned up at him. “Well shit.” Jay smiled back at him in feigned understanding, pulling him to his feet and taking his clothes off before helping him into the bath to lie back in the water.


End file.
